Excerpts from: Purple People The Crazy Culture and Customs of Minnesota Vikings Fans, the Best Fans in the NFL

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This is the foreword as it appears in the book.  It is reprinted here in its entirety because it explains why the book was written and why every Vikings fan would gain a deeper appreciation for their Purple Passion by reading it.

The idea for this book came to me at the Minnesota Vikings home game against the New York Giants on November 10, 2002. The Vikings were 2-5 at the time and about to drop to 2-6. The season started off disappointing and would continue the same way. Yet I was having a great time. I was there with friends and family members, and we partied with other fans sitting near us, out in the tailgating lots, and at sports bars. We enjoyed ourselves wherever we went. Apparently, so did everyone else because at every stop people were laughing and talking and having a good time. Why? After all, the Vikings performance that day, and that season, certainly did nothing to foster such enjoyment. I came to the conclusion that the fans were having a good time simply because they’d resolved to do so. They decided the Vikings game provided a good excuse to enjoy life, regardless of the outcome. The team may have been having a bad season, but the fans were having a great year.

Then I realized that the only permanent asset of any team is its fans. Players come and go at an alarming rate. Coaches move on after a few years. Owners sell out when the price looks attractive. New stadiums get built…eventually. Even team colors and uniforms change. Everything about the franchise appears fluid, transient.

The fans, however, stay constant year after year. I know one lady who attended the first preseason game in Vikings history, and I met several families who bought season tickets way back in the team’s inaugural season who still come to every game. Vikings fans then are still Vikings fans now, yet nobody inside the organization is still around from that first year. That’s why I feel that the true character of any franchise is not necessarily with its front office, ownership, players or personnel, but with the people who buy the tickets, watch the games, and wear the colors. These people are the only ones who will still be around in ten years.

And the fans will still be partying a decade from now. Long ago, Vikings fans created a culture of celebration around game day. Like Christmas and other holidays, Vikings games brought people together. They shared good times and bad times and they kept coming back because the true point was not the final score but rather spending quality time together and enjoying life. I know in my own experience that the Minnesota Vikings have improved my relationship with my family and fostered lifelong friendships. The team does this by giving us an excuse to get together, and always giving us something to talk about.

The Vikings bring all fans closer together. A good season can galvanize an entire continent of fans. From Billings, Montana to Madison, Wisconsin loyalists proudly fly Vikings flags on their cars. Sports bars in Portland get filled with people wearing purple jerseys. Down in Miami, native Midwesterners who long ago moved south to avoid the cold winters gather in someone’s living room to cheer on the team.

It’s all the same team, and it’s all the same Purple Nation. Any fan could walk into that bar in Portland, or that living room in Miami and immediately start a pleasant conversation with those people. In doing so, the Vikings have just made the world a little smaller and a little friendlier—and that’s a great thing.

Another reason I decided to write this book was that, while there are many books about the Minnesota Vikings, there had yet to be a book about Vikings fans. In fact, to my knowledge there is not a single book dedicated entirely to the fans of any professional sports franchise. Sometimes, books on a team contain a chapter or two about the fans, but they read as superfluous to the main point, which is the players and how the team performed in any given year. This struck me as missing the central point of all sporting events. The team exists for our enjoyment, not the other way around. Without the fans paying for tickets, there would be no pro sports. We are not superfluous; we are essential. We deserved more than just a few paragraphs. We deserved our own book.

So here it is, a book about the fans and for the fans—the first of its kind ever. No other team in no other sport can boast of such a book. It is a testimony to the greatness of Minnesota Vikings fans that they are the subject of the first.